I'll eat up all your crackers and your licorice

100 Words about Baseball

Why I Love Baseball

There is no clock
90 feet between bases is genius
There are secret signs
Hanging curveballs are sexy
Numbers are magic: 755, 56, 7, 61, 1.12
Tinker to Evers to Chance
Ivy at Wrigley
The Green Monster
The suicide squeeze
Cracker Jack
Walt Whitman liked it
Jackie Robinson and Pee-Wee Reese
It just feels American
The seventh-inning stretch
Superstition
Guys in tight pants
Bull Durham
Centerfield
There’s no crying in baseball
Cooperstown
A great play at the plate
Chatter
Pepper
High socks
Tradition
Spring training
Keeping score
The rubber game
The infield fly rule
162 chances

Become a Fan

Black Friday report

I read on the BF message boards that Best Buy had an unadvertised sale on a Toshiba laptop for $249 as one of their "doorbusters." Since I wanted to get my sister a computer and I didn't want to spend much (for a lot of reasons, one being that she would be upset if I spent too much on her), I decided to stop at Best Buy first. I arrived at about 4:15am.

Oh. My. God.

Now, I am an experienced Black Friday shopper. But I've never started the day at Best Buy and I've never really gone out looking for big ticket electronics. I knew that there would be a line when I arrived, but nothing could have prepared me for this line. Our Best Buy is attached to the larger mall in the area (and one of the largest malls in the state). Best Buy shares a very large parking area with a mall entrance. When I arrived, the line stretched from the front door and all the way around the perimeter of the parking lot. I kid you not, there were 1500 people in that line, maybe closer to 2000.

I have to admit, I was a little bit stunned by the line. I parked and lined up. After a few minutes of chatting, I learned that Best Buy employees were coming around with coupons for products. If you got a coupon, you were guaranteed that item. While I waited, people with camera, camcorder and TV coupons came by. Each claimed to be unaware of where the computer coupon person was. At about 4:45, I decided that it was stupid to wait in this line -- the computers would all be gone long before I got in. So I hopped in the car and left. (There were definitely 2000 people in line by this point.) Determined not to be shut out, I drove over to Panera Bread, pulled into a parking spot next to the building, used my laptop to hop on their free wireless, and was ready and waiting to snag a great computer from walmart.com. (Now is not a good time for my laptop's card slot to be bunged-up, rendering my Sprint AirCard useless.)

From there I headed to Target and got in line for their 6am opening where I proceeded to feel like the only person in the world that couldn't care less about a flat panel, plasma, LCD, HD or otherwise new TV. The doors opened and everyone headed for electronics and I headed for toys. After a few circuits through the store I picked up:

Then I went home, bought a printer from circuitcity.com and got back in bed, not getting up until noon. :)

One unfortunate result of my morning of standing in lines in the cold -- my sore calf muscles are paying the price. They felt okay but still sore when I left in the morning, but when I woke up from my nap, I could barely walk. Ouchie.